Category Archives: Start-up culture

A couple of days ago, I noticed some intense tweets from the CEO and founder of local start-up, We Evolve Us (WEU). After a few messages back and forth, I asked if I could ask a few detailed questions via email. What follows is an unedited version of that conversation.

But to supply some context for those coming to this subject without knowing any of the backstory, WEU is a two-year old, bootstrapped, Roanoke-based “social network” (social network being in quotes because: 1. it is bit more ambitious than the average social network and 2. as you are about to read, the project has changed a bit over the course of the last year).

I wrote about these guys a year ago, and you can find that story in the archives here. Without further ado, let’s jump into this pretty illuminating – and, ultimately, sort of depressing – interview regarding the future of Roanoke’s most ambitious start-up.

Question: You said on Twitter that the build for We Evolve Us is almost over. How do you define the product at this point? What is the “elevator pitch”?

Answer: First off, I really want to say that building We Evolve Us is never really over. We built WEU to be an evolving platform that is able to adapt and change with the need of its users. I fully anticipate, that there are a lot of things we’re still missing from the business platform, but we are now at the point where we’re ready start opening it up to businesses. Elevator Pitch: We Evolve Us is collaboration software to plan, track, and organize the projects you’re working on, so you can focus on the things that matter. There are 2 main parts: The community platform is a localized social project collaboration web/mobile/desktop apps for sharing what you’re passionate about, making things happen, and improving your community you live in. The business platform is a “white-label” version of the product that we’ll be evolving around our business customers, instead of city based its structured around each companies individual organizational structure. Leadership in the organization can push out strategic goals or initiatives to the different departments and divisions within the app and data/metrics/reports aggregate up the chain for an at a glance look at progress and key players who’re driving results.

Q: Maybe I’m incorrect, but it sounds like the business platform is substantially different than the social platform. Isn’t there a risk of confusing your users? Have you really built 2 different tools under one umbrella? In which case, wouldn’t it make sense to spin one off?

A: We are actually spinning off the B2B platform as a separate product, but there is still some tie in to the community funding pool for the B2C side of the house. Each company will have their own private company branded site, apps, database(potentially even their own server and network if they want to pay for that), and specific features tied into their existing business applications. Each will be separate from other all of the other business customers and the community platform. Where the tie in happens, is with the community funding pool. We’ll be taking a portion of our revenue from our business clients and be putting that into the city pools for the cities they’re based in. We’ll probably also be adding a “this community funding pool is sponsored by: Business A, Business B(from out B2B product) and Subscriber A, Subscriber B, etc.(from the community side)” section, to give our business and premium customers some recognition for their support in the community.

Q: A year ago, I said your idea was “Facebook and Kickstarter had a baby,” or something to that effect. How has the site evolved in a year?

A: It’s evolved pretty significantly in the last year. We’ve built out a ton of user requested features and the tried out a handful of different ways to monetize the community platform, a few of which were the crowdfunding, community funding pool, and the subscription model. It’s really become/becoming a more robust and comprehensive project and people management solution.

Q: What are some of the features of the site? What, if anything, are you doing that others aren’t?

A: Community funding pool is definitely a unique on I haven’t seen any others trying that yet. The structure of the platform (cities for B2C or company org chart for B2B) is really unique as well, we really built the platform around the way people currently work in the real world without tech and then added the pieces to capture all of that data and allow for real time collaboration. A lot of the individual features (like chat, drag and drop task mgmt., volunteer mgmt, events, brainstorming, etc.) exist in other apps and product, but no one is really brought them all together for a complete solution to getting things accomplished.

Q: Speaking of “others”: who is your competition? If someone is thinking of using WEU, what are the other platforms they are likely comparing you against?

A: Slack, Trello, Basecamp, Wrike, crowdfunding platforms, local and enterprise social networks, and a handful of others in various spaces. We don’t have any real direct competitors yet because we’re essentially brining the best from all of these part together into one place but I have no doubt there will be once we start to really take off and people realize what a tools like this is capable of.

Q: I’m not personally familiar with all those competitors cited, but I know Slack. Their market penetration is impressive, at least on the business side…I’m unaware of them vying for a separate social foothold, beyond making an office environment more social and team focused. Assume a level playing field: how do you beat Slack? How would you pitch WEU to a company currently using Slack in order to persuade them to switch?

A: We really have a different approach than a lot of them, I see our ability to grow and capture the market as a result of us becoming a close part of the communities that support us. Early business customers will get a really tailored solution to their business as we start to figure out what they most need to be effective and efficient. Afterward, what we learned/built/evolved will be applied to the core business platform and to the community platform as features seem relevant. Each business customer will raise the available funding for community projects and will get as close to advertising as we’re willing to get at this point on the community platform. Pretty soon after we’ve gotten a handful of businesses on-boarded you’ll start to see community projects and events developing a lot faster since the funding will be readily available to project creators and the community to vote on which projects they want to see funded.

Q: You’ll notice in that last question I abbreviated your site’s name to WEU. That is because “We Evolve Us” is a mouthful to either say or type. This might be a dickish question, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but have you considered a shorter name? (My own humble proposal: Weevo. That’s how I think of the name of the site in my own head.)

A: Yeah we have definitely thought about the name a lot and we own the domain weu.io and may eventually set things up on that to solve the problem you mentioned. Most of the time I just refer to it as WEU (pronounced “we-you”). I’m still a fan of the name because it puts the ownership on every user to make the platform and long-term the world what we want it to be.

Q: What funding model are you considering at this point? Are you looking for investors? Subscriptions?

A: We knew we would have to start off with bootstrapping to build the initial product. It was just way too ambitious of a project in the beginning for most investors (and unfortunately users) to be able to wrap their head around before it was actually built. I remember when I first realized this, I was talking to a few local investors and they told me it was a great concept but didn’t think it was focused enough and doubted our ability to actually build/deliver it. Now that the B2C and B2B products are finally built and we’ve got a clear path to revenue, and we’re looking for investors so that we can pull the current team on “full-time” so that as we start to onboard businesses we’ll be able to iterate quickly and deliver amazing support as we adapt the platform around their needs. If we can’t find funding here in Roanoke for the next stage of our company, I know there are a lot of other cities across the country that are hungry for tech startups and feel confident that we can find the investment we need. If I have to go on a city to city cross-country road trip pitching businesses and investors in every city along the way, I will. We also are in the process of onboarding our new Chief Sales Officer, which rounds out the team and fills in the last of the gaps we needed to really be ready to scale and grow quickly. If we pick up enough sales soon we may even be able to skip the seed round entirely.

Q: Sounds like you are throwing down the gauntlet: WEU gets local funding soon, or the team is leaving for another city with a better start-up culture. Is that accurate?

A: Unfortunately, yes. We are at the point now where we need seed funding and the whole team without day jobs to really be able to scale and execute on the next phase of our plan. If Roanoke is unable to provide the initial capital we need to scale then I have to look at other options. Roanoke is my home and I want to build my company and create jobs here, but at the end of the day I’ve already got an amazing team with me that have been pouring there lives into building this, and there is not chance in hell that I will let them down. I will do what I have to do. I know Roanoke has expressed a lot of interest in attracting and building tech companies in the area and there are a few things coming down the pipe in a year or two, but that unfortunately doesn’t match up with our timeline at the moment, and I’m not one to wait around. We’re ready to grow now and so we’ll either find the resources we need to grow and scale here or elsewhere but they are definitely out there and we will definitely find them soon.

So. That ends the interview. And it might soon be the end of WEU calling Roanoke home. Which is a freaking bummer, man. But you can’t exactly blame Philip and his team from actually trying to get this product to market after spending two years building it. They need money to keep going, and they are going to look beyond our lil’ valley if they can’t make this shizz happen here.

Let’s be honest: I write more about music than I do about start-ups. But when I DO write about start-ups, I generally confine my meandering discourse to tech start-ups.

However, I’m as interested in Roanoke business generally as I am in the particulars of our burgeoning tech scene, so when a different kind of “start-up” takes off, I think it is worthy of attention.

Enter Valley Bank. Founded in 1995, Valley Bank has been a runaway success here in Roanoke, often with double digit growth, year-over-year. And that has been a real boon to us all, because local banks and banking local are vital to organic growth in small markets like Roanoke. However, that kind of macroeconomic crap is not the point of this post.

Let’s talk instead about Valley Bank’s “exit strategy.”

Like many tech start-ups, Valley Bank built a small, loyal, local following, and when a bigger bank came calling with a cash offer, they sold out. I got a form letter last week from Ellis Gutshal, Valley’s president, saying that the long-planned merger is now official.

This is the start-up dream, right? Build something great and let somebody else scale it for you, taking a fat payday.

I can’t say I blame them, but at the same time, local banks occupy a place of public trust that I feel Valley has broken in this case. Personally, I went with Valley because I liked their community focus, and I have no confidence at all that their purchaser, BNC Bancorp, will give shit one about Roanoke. They are based in High Point, NC. Valley Bank is probably a write-off for them. And I feel a little bit betrayed, and disappointed in myself that I didn’t pick Hometown Bank instead.

Banks matter in tangible ways in the lives of individuals that tech companies, even big ones, just do not. Think about it: Facebook buys Oculus, and nothing changes for anyone other than the employees of Oculus; but a local bank like Valley gets bought out, and suddenly it is a little bit harder for all of us in Roanoke to get a mortgage. Whether the issue is a home loan or a business loan, they’ll say their underwriting will stay in-house and all decisions will be local, but that will NOT be true. Instead of a personal banking relationship, Valley’s customers will be dealing with the local representatives of far away shot calllers.

After the Star Tank event a couple of weeks ago at the Grandin CoLab, I tracked down one of the most interesting presenters, a fellow named David Conner, and pestered him for an interview. What made David stand out from the pack of other presenters was that his product, Voxxel, had actually been created, as opposed to most of the other presenters whose ideas existed as yet only in their heads.

Voxxel is sort of a training/coaching application for vocal impersonations. For instance, if you are trying to nail your Christopher Walken impersonation, it matches your voice against a clip of Walken speaking and tells you how close you are. You can demo the product at the site here, but David does ask that you have a bit of patience if you run into any UI issues, as he is continually updating the product and is specifically working on some big items this week.

As for David: he is 29 and a Roanoke native, having graduated from Salem High School in 2004. He did start out at Virginia Tech in the computer science program, but left after a couple of years. He describes himself as a basically self-taught programmer, though he was quick to give credit to all those he has worked with over the years as being very helpful to his development. After a short stint working in Denver, he is back in town and working on Voxxel more or less full time. If you wish to bother him like I did, or just want to learn even more about Voxxel, you can find him on Twitter using the handle @dcunit3d.

Anyway, I harassed this poor guy into spilling his secrets. I submitted a bunch of questions to him in an email, and several days later, he wrote back with some thoughtful answers:

Are you from Roanoke, and if not, what brought you to town?

I’m a Roanoke native and I’ve lived in the area for most of my life.

Are you a full-time developer, or is this a “side” gig/hobby?

Right now, I’m technically self-employed, but mostly focused on Voxxel. I’m pretty picky as to which technologies I work with. Since I’ve starting making my idea public, I want to continue focusing on it solely for now.

Is Voxxel your first finished product? If not, what else have you done?

I originally got into Ruby development back in 2007 when I created a song request app for my family’s roller skating rink. The app was a hit with the kids, but I didn’t know much about deploying apps. I just put it together because it was fun to work on and I was tired of taking song requests with pen and paper.
I wanted to launch it as a product marketed towards skating rinks specifically, but I had no idea how to put together a business model and I didn’t know where to turn for advice. I spent a lot of time in the past few years working on a startup for music producers called Oscillate, but I never got it off the ground. I originally had the idea in late 2011 and the product would allow music producers to collaborate on tracks they were making. It was originally geared to be the Github for music producers, but I pivoted later on to make Oscillate a kind of app store to find new sounds for hardware and software instruments.
The level of commitment for getting a startup off the ground is staggering, especially if you’re working a full-time job and don’t have funding. In the past, getting a prototype together has been the main impediment to getting funded. Most important is to have something to show prospective investors that they can use. If you’re working 40+ hours per week and putting together an app, there’s not much time left for much else.

Do you have a team, or did you create Voxxel on your own?

No, at the moment, I’m the sole founder. I’m actively searching for a CTO and in particular, cofounders who have experience with IP licensing and rights publishing. I have lots of technical experience, but I’m looking for a CTO to help offload this, so I can holistically focus on other aspects of the business. I’m a fairly good programmer, but I’m looking for someone who can rapidly prototype mobile and web interfaces for the Voxxel UI.

Did you develop Voxxel from scratch? Is it patented? Will you be patenting it?

Yes, but for now our demo is limited to the web, with a mobile friendly layout. I was planning on using the Ionic framework for the mobile apps, but for technical reasons, I’m going to have to develop native Android and iOS apps.
Some of our voice processing may be patentable, but for now, we haven’t done the research for patenting our IP. I’ll need to spend some time digging around on the USPTO website to identify what is patentable as well as what IP our software depends on, if any. Getting patents is a very expensive process and from what I’ve heard can require $2000+ to follow through with and that doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it. Provisional patents are much more reasonable. About $200, I think.

Would you say Voxxel is your “life’s work”? By that I mean, do you intend/hope to make a career on this? If not, what are your goals for the product?

Definitely, if I can get the runway I need to launch Voxxel. I have several goals for the project. I’m always going for more than two birds with one stone. If we launch and Voxxel is a hit, that’s great. If not, I’ve built a fun app that I can use to market my dev skills. But mainly, I just want an app that helps me improve my impersonations.

How much further development is needed? Is it completed?

There’s a few months of work left before Voxxel can officially launch. We need to develop native apps for iOS and Android, as well as the API backend. On top of that, the backend will need a lot of technical work to process the user’s vocal samples, which involves machine learning.

If Voxxel isn’t your one big idea, have you already moved on to the next one? What is that next move?

I have a ton of startup ideas, but most of them require significant upfront investment and technical skill to move forward. I’ve got a log of ideas for biotechnology and bioinformatics, but they require a lot of skills I don’t have.
Voxxel is great because it doesn’t require investment to get started! Those ideas are becoming rarer as more apps get built out.

What is your opinion of the Roanoke “start up scene”? Is there one? Do you have local collaborators/friends who also are building or have built businesses and applications here locally?

I just moved back from Denver, CO about a year ago and I’ve been blown away by all the developments in the Roanoke startup scene. The CoLab is a great facility that is really building up our community. The best part about our startup community is that it encourages entrepreneurs and developers to connect and learn. Everyone exchanges great ideas and grows their network. The community has something to offer everyone, whether you’ve got a great startup idea or you’re working a more corporate job. Innovation is everywhere these days.
I’m planning on producing some custom content for Voxxel, so I’m very excited to hear about CoLab Oration Studios! It’s another great resource for entrepreneurs here.
I miss some of the more niche tech meetups that Denver had to offer, like Cassandra and Neo4J. Our local .NET meetup group recently presented on Neo4J. Last year, I started a Ruby meetup and an AngularJS meetup. I spent a lot of time marketing it and our first few events pulled in quite a few developers, but I got busy with work and we stopped meeting.

I know you pitched at Star Tank…are you actively seeking investors to bring Voxxel out on your own? If you do get funding, would you stay in Roanoke? Have you identified enough local talent in order to build a business here?

I’m not actively seeking investors at the moment. I want to build up my user base and develop my app further beforehand.
I’m planning on staying in Roanoke for six months at least, but because of my app’s focus on the entertainment industry, the ideal location would be NYC or LA.

Totally understand that Voxxel is likely your baby and that takes most of your focus. However, I happen to know of other local people who want to start a tech company but who do not have the technical chops themselves to get it off the ground. Would you be open to joining another start-up?

Voxxel is definitely my baby lol. I’m just focused on Voxxel for the moment. But, I’d love to connect with entrepreneurs in the area to exchange advice on technology and business strategy.

Did you see any of the other presentations at Star Tank? What did you think of them?

I actually had to run to work at the Skate Center as soon as my presentation was over. I wish I had been able to hear more of the pitches.

Where did you come up with the idea?

I was watching Parks and Rec on Hulu one night a few months ago, impersonating the characters on screen — but not very well. I found myself wanting an app to improve accents and impersonations, but I couldn’t find anything like it. Since we all sound different to others than we do to ourselves, I wanted an app that could provide me with unbiased feedback.

…and there ends the interview! A first for Grandin Republic, and I’m going to give myself a ton of credit and say I’m pretty much the world’s best email interviewer. Suck it, Anderson Cooper.

The second Star Tank event at CoLab is a mere two days away, and the anticipation is running so high I’ve been vomiting for days! Could just be the flu, but hell if I ain’t excited!

So guess what I’ve gone and done for all y’all? I did some honest to goodness reporting! That’s right, I’ve cultivated a source, a real start-up Deepthroat. Heh.

Here’s what I found out: there were fewer submissions for this event than the one last fall, but there is a much higher percentage of tech start-ups pitching. Further, most of these start-ups are in the ideation/seed stage. This is opposed to the last event, where most presenters came with ideas for invented products, or existing business expansion.

Also substantially different than last time, this event is intended more as a coaching exercise than an opportunity to find viable business ideas. What was learned at the first event was that there are passionate entrepreneurs here in the Valley who do not have the business skills to successfully market themselves. Though I didn’t attend, I assume this means a bunch of dudes got up on stage just a-sweatin’ and a-stammerin’.

The idea this time around is to find the proverbial “diamond in the rough” and coach him/her up so that they can pitch more effectively in the future. This mission is less sexy than a full-on unicorn search, but potentially more useful to the larger start-up community.

In another deviation from the previous formula, this event will be open to the public and the media. I can’t say I support this idea. If you imagine Mr. Sweaty Inventor up there pitching, don’t you think additional audience members will amplify his nervousness?

I do plan to attend at least part of this event and will report back what I find, especially if I spot a sweaty diamond, regardless of whether they receive funding.

Today is Wednesday, which means tonight is Xpo Wednesday at the CoLab, which means last Wednesday was XpoPitchNight, which means this post is a week late. Sorry.

Since this is somewhat less than timely, I’ll keep it brief, as you are unlikely to care any longer. Here’s the gist:

The event was less pitch-y than anticipated (by me). That is, if by “pitch-y” you mean entrepreneurs offering ideas in search of funding, and I do, so that is how we will be defining the term. And there just wasn’t much pitch-y-ness on display.

One gentleman stood athwart the stage and offered 4 business ideas he wasn’t interested in working on.

Another fellow dispassionately proposed a bike sharing idea.

…and that was it! At least from a pitch-y perspective.

There were other ideas, but they weren’t about tech start-up, billion-dollar-business kind of stuff. For instance, one dude pitched the idea of building a viewing deck/platform off the side of the Wasena Bridge. Why? No idea. It was kind of cool, though.

In summation, the event was not what I had anticipated or hoped for, but it was sort of fun anyway. Goes to show you, Ms. Jackson, that you can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather. Or more precisely, you can plan a pretty pitch night, but you can’t predict the pitch-y-ness.

There is another XpoPitchNight in the works for June. I’m fairly certain it will be fun, and I hope it will be pitch-y. I can assure you of this: the event was clearly enough of a success that time slots WILL fill up, so if you are a start-up looking for funding (it is possible!) or just looking to polish your knob pitch in front of a friendly crowd, contact Ariel at the CoLab post haste!

[Note: I teased this post awhile ago and said I needed to research appropriate links to insert. Well, that never happened. This draft has been waiting for publishing for more than 2 weeks. I’m going with it.]

I’ve been mulling a concept I call Human Venture Capital. A quick googilation shows many others have come up with this “unique” phrasing, but it seems generally to be applied to corporate headhunting. As in, “We’re venture capitalists who happen to invest in people!”

Clever.

But I have a different formulation in mind.

What got me thinking about this was this article that ran in the Roanoke Times. It made a painfully obvious point: we don’t have enough venture capital here in the Valley to spread around as start-up money. That means all the resources that have been devoted, in a top-down fashion, from regional partnerships and local heavyweights to attract and retain IT talent and companies has and will be largely wasted, at least insofar as it is intended to build a local tech economy. They are destined to fail because they do not adequately address basic realities of human existence, e.g. needing money to eat, yet lacking that money, from the period of idea generation until a demonstration of minimum viability attracts the notice of potential investors.

Local groups and partnerships, whether you are talking about 460Angels or Innovation Network, that want to invest in the growth of our local economy do so in the most traditional and least effective way, by seeking to partner with smart and promising businesses.

But “start-up culture” is most fundamentally about a time pre-incorporation. In other words, start-up culture qua culture is about people, and the ideas in the heads of those people, NOT businesses. It is about, like, a vibe, man.

This is important for Roanoke because, unlike New York or San Francisco, or Austin or DC, it just does not often happen that a logical, thoughtful decision is made to base or grow an IT business here. Again, for extremely obvious reasons: a talent deficit and a lack of capital at the early seed stage.

This may sound a bit circular, and it is, but I think we can get clarity with a concrete example.

If you have a bright and ambitious entrepreneur coming through Virginia Tech, and he wants to start a tech company, what are his options? He can stay in Blacksburg and try to make a go of it, or he can take his idea to the Other Valley. Our local bigwigs want him to stay, keeping his big brain and his youth in our slow, graying area – obviously. But consider his obstacles: he needs help and he needs money.

Here is where you need to actually consider the nitty gritty details, and why it is unrealistic to expect start-up successes without first inculcating a supportive start-up culture:

Let’s assume he has graduated. He now has to pay rent, pay student loans, buy food. He has bills. We’ll be generous in this example and assume his parents are helping him out with those basics.

Ok, he still needs computer crap, servers and whatnot, and office space. Let’s assume here servers are cheap and office space is fairly affordable (Blacksburg does have TechPad, etc.). So far so good.

Then he needs help, employees. Apart from just the bare minimum in terms of being able to pay their own bills, the average employee wants to make a decent living, especially an employee who has the ever-so-in-demand skills needed by a tech startup. But, again, we’re going to give our example man every advantage in this scenario and say that the employees, in addition to being skilled, are also his friends, believing in his vision and willing to work for free.

Take a minute to consider the example so far: a skilled team of professionals without bills willing to work for free. Oh, and they need to maintain this for one year to 18 months.

Does this sound like a common scenario?

And yet, this is the sort of thing that that the aforementioned regional heavyweights are looking for, “young” companies with “scaleable” ideas. In other words, the end product you’d see from a dedicated team after more than a year of hard work.

PLUS!, this team still has to be in Blacksburg, Virginia, at the end of that year, because if they have decamped to NoVA or San Fran, they sure as hell aren’t coming back. (And yet, this is actually the least far-fetched part of the dream scenario, because the cost of living here is really attractive, and if you have the drive and ambition, a year in Blacksburg is probably the same cost as two months in the Bay Area.)

Still, I can’t totally condemn the 460Angels’ and Innovation Networks out there, because this scenario does play out with enough regularity to inspire optimism. In fact, from a purely investment standpoint, this might actually be a strategy preferable to the one faced by VCs in the Other Valley, because if you can step in and invest in a group of guys who have toiled away in obscurity for a year in Blacksburg, for free, then you know you are dealing with a truly dedicated team. However, as the backbone of an economic development strategy for an entire region aspiring to tech relevance, this is pure nonsense…we’re talking about a handful of people. Like, literally 20-30 guys per year come out of Virginia Tech and attempt to start IT businesses, and few of those are going to last a year. Does the Roanoke-Blacksburg-NRV need or deserve the Innovation Network, Third Security, the Virginia Tech Corporate Research initiatives, etcetera etcetera, for TWENTY or THIRTY unpaid jobs per year?

Wait wait wait! No, of course I don’t want to see these resources vanish! I just want to see them doing a better job at, you know, start-up-y things.

Which brings me back to my notion of Human Venture Capital and our example man. What if, instead of waiting to lavish a couple of million dollars on that one Mr. Example who happens to make it a year, we helped a few guys – and gals; let’s not be sexist, y’all – actually make a go of it that first year? Instead of waiting to invest in the companies, we make an upfront investment in the people?

“Pray tell, kind sir, how do we do this?” Easier than you think, and WAAAAAY cheaper than two million bucks: you buy a house or two near TechPad in Blacksburg and CoLab in Roanoke, and you let tech entrepreneurs have a year rent-free. Done.

And I truly do mean it as being just that simple. It would be nice if there was an additional stipend for food, but not necessary…it’s just that start-ups take so much time that it would be nice if we could spare these entrepreneurs the necessity of getting a part time job, but, eh.

And think of the chasm between the risks taken on by the investors in these two scenarios: you invest in a start-up that fails, you get nothing; you invest in a “hostel,” well, either way, you own a house. And the difference in strategy: a huge outlay of cash as a bet on highly leveraged returns, versus a sensible real estate investment for $10,000.

And when I say “you” I mean YOU. You can be a venture capitalist in our burgeoning tech scene. And given the community-focused effort involved, you can do so as a B corp and get tax advantages. Dope.

I’m not saying anything, I’m just sayin’.

But what I’m saying is this: we need to start smaller, but casting a wider net. Worst case scenario, we have more young people stick around town for a year after graduation without accomplishing much. That doesn’t sound too awful, does it?

I’ve actually got a really long piece mostly finished, but I need to add links and crap…research is a chore, man.

In the mean time, wanted to write a quick note about an upcoming event, one week from today, at Grandin CoLab called #XpoPitchNight. Why the hashtag? Because as of now, it really only seems to exist on Twitter.

Details are sketchy: open to all, presenters get 5 minutes to make a pitch. “About?” Good question. Again, details are sketchy. But the overall idea seems to be to get interesting people to get up and say interesting things.

Interesting is good, n’es pas?

Come out and get some.

And then, head on down to Liquorville (Sidewinders) and see this guy play an acoustic set for 10 bucks:

When I first heard this on the radio, I thought, that’s a damn catchy tune. That was about a month ago, and then I kept hearing it and hearing it. I liked it, but it was one of those situations where the DJ wasn’t saying his name (or I didn’t catch it) so I didn’t know who dude was. Finally, I heard his name: Michael Ray. So I YouTube’d him.